Recording

Recording acoustic keyboard instruments in a home environment can be pretty demanding, but with a little care you can still get professional results.

Jeff Wayne's classic musical adaptation of H.G Wells' novel The War Of The Worlds was a technical tour de force and an enduring commercial success. 27 years after its release, it has undergone a complete rework for 5.1 surround using Pro Tools.

Could you explain the subtle differences between all the different variants of Dolby — A, B, C, HX and SR?

I use MIDI-sequenced sound modules for backing, so I am considering the option of sync'ing my sequencer with my AW4416 and running the modules in time with the recorded material. Or is it more sensible for me to record the module outputs to the hard drive?

It's not a bad gig being chief engineer to the world's hottest production duo, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. But it takes a lot of hard work to keep up with The Neptunes...

Producer/engineer Peter Henderson spent nine months recording an album that neither he nor the A&M label could afford to fail. Yet when he handed in the masters, Henderson was convinced that Supertramp's Breakfast In America would finish his career...

Our resident specialist offers his demo diagnosis and prescribes an appropriate remedy.

What's the best way to get rid of tom ring (a ringing noise after the tom is hit) picked up by the tom mics on a recording...

Queens Of The Stone Age's fourth album Lullabies To Paralyze has cemented their position as the biggest and most exciting rock band in the world. Engineer and co-producer Joe Barresi describes the combination of old-school technique and far-out experiment that went into its making.

Disagreement can be destructive, but it can also drive a band on to new heights. So it was when 10cc's Kevin Godley turned up his nose at a love song penned by Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, insisting that it would have to be completely reinvented in the studio...

Will Mowat made his name first as a sequencer expert and then as a writer with Soul II Soul. As a world music producer, his recent projects provide inspirational examples of how to combine performance with programming and overcome the limitations of a bare-bones budget.

Back in 1986-7, there was an ad for an amazing and inexpensive technique which, it claimed, added many more audio tracks to your eight-track reel-to-reel tape machine. How did it work?

If I limit using a Alesis Nanocompressor when recording into my Emu 1820 soundcard, can I still limit the final mix with, say, Waves' L1 Ultramaximizer without any problems?

I've recorded several songs in 24-bit/48kHz. When I went to burn the CD,  I had to convert them to 16-bit/44.1kHz. So does it make a difference in the audio quality of the final CD tracks to record at the higher rates?

Listen to these tracks from SOS readers and see whether you agree with the good Doctor's prognosis...

The Who's final album with Keith Moon took almost a year to record and pushed the band to the limit. Engineer and producer Jon Astley tells the remarkable story behind Who Are You?'s title track.

The Dust Brothers changed the course of record production with a new approach to sampling. In their first ever in-depth technical interview, John King and Mike Simpson explain their unique way of making records and open the doors of their remarkable LA studio, The Boat.

Greg Ladanyi showed up at the right time in rock history to chair sessions for Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, Toto, Fleetwood Mac and the Jacksons — but while 50 percent of life may be simply showing up, the other half requires a lot of hard work.

Pop shields are essential for most modern studio productions, but what are they and why are they so important?

East Norfolk Sixth Form College needed help integrating their hardware multitracker with their computer sequencing system, so the SOS team travelled over to Great Yarmouth to lend a hand.

They might have been the greatest production team of the disco era, but even Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards could fall victim to the elitism of New York's club scene — and their response was the most memorable of all Chic's hits.